


Life in a Beautiful Light

by Low_As_Hells_From_Heaven



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Origin Story, Strike Team Delta
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-07
Updated: 2018-09-13
Packaged: 2019-07-08 03:46:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15922250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Low_As_Hells_From_Heaven/pseuds/Low_As_Hells_From_Heaven
Summary: Natalia Alianovna Romanova would never have choices. She knew that.But maybe, just maybe, if she could be as good as Clint Barton, maybe Natasha Romanoff could have them.Natalia was never the type to risk everything for nothing because the Red Room didn't encourage such behaviour.But she would follow Clint Barton to the ends of the earth if it meant that doing so was her choice.-This focuses heavily on the damage the Red Room did to a child that never knew any different. Natasha doesn't start out as a badass assassin, she starts out as a scared little girl that was brainwashed and traumatised and doesn't know that she can be worth something even if she isn't perfect.





	1. Extraction

It was a rather very bad extraction plan, no doubt about it. She had never actually wanted to question her handlers before, but this time she was considering it. No that she would ever actually do it, she wasn’t insane, but just thinking about it like it was a possibility made her feel somehow more in control and through that even a little better about the horrible mess of an extraction plan she was presented with.

Granted, she was mostly just happy to have an extraction plan at all, because having a chance of getting out alive was always better than being sent in to complete a mission and then looking for the best place to be sniped from because planning a real extraction was too much work. Though, now that she thought about it, that didn’t happen as often anymore. It was probably something to do with the training getting better and better. It made the Red Room have fewer agents, but the ones that did survive were infinitely better at what they did so it made it worth keeping them.

Natalia decided not to question the plan and didn’t that sound much better than she didn’t dare to question it?

The exit might have been a hot mess but the entrance was as brilliant as usual. It wasn’t anything special but the research they had done on her target was frankly amazing. The file she had on him was easily as thick as her index finger and it detailed everything she could hope for. Her marks name, his hobbies to make polite conversation about, his preferences in women, she would have to bleach her hair and get a black lace push-up, and a surprisingly detailed list of all the kinks she could play into.

Natalia was browsing through the wardrobe they had prepared for her, trying to find the most revealing and degrading dress that would still hide the bag of supplies she would need for the extraction. Turns out, hiding duffle bags was not part of most designers’ considerations when making dresses. Who would have thought? Not the Red Room apparently.

Even though Natalia was used to hiding things in revealing dresses that were never supposed to be mentioned in the same sentence as said dresses it was one thing to hide a garrote or a syringe and a completely different thing to hide a duffle bag that was filled with 15 days’ worth of food and water, even if she truly kept it to a bare minimum and relied on the Red Room to come get her in Saint Petersburg without her having to move at all for the last three days of her… journey. Natalia didn’t rely on that. She was, after all, still not clinically insane.

She finally made a decision and chose a dress that was not technically recommended but obviously still allowed, it wouldn’t have been in the wardrobe otherwise. It wasn’t as desperate looking as she would have hoped but she was reasonably sure that she could convince her mark that breaking a delicate doll was at least as much fun as toying with a ruined plaything. Natalia packed the dress into a garment bag and her supplies into a duffle bag that would fit under the crinoline of the soft pink dress. Then she packed a second bag with the make-up, bleach and stockings she would need and made her way to the plane where her handler would wait with the underwear she requested.

She took a little detour on her way to the garage to avoid walking past the handlers’ quarters, they didn’t like it when the girls were in those corridors when they weren’t actually available, and walked towards the back of the garage where the big intercontinental plane was stored. She saw her handler talking to the pilot and waited at the cargo ramp without making herself known. That would be disrespectful and she had no desire to anger her handler, she was after all still worried about her extraction.

She didn’t have to wait long, the pilot made his way towards the front of the plane and her handler gestured for her to show him the content of her bags on one of the metal tables that were placed near the wall for this exact purpose. She unpacked the garment bag diligently, taking great care not to damage the fine fabric of the carefully layered skirt while also making sure to show the man every nook and cranny that could have hidden something. Then she moved on to the duffle bag, showing him first he belt she would use to strap it to her beneath the dress and then the content of the bag, 15 sealed half liter water bottles and ten MREs. Then she pulled a small knife and a plastic container with a pill out of compartments that had been sewn into the bag to hold those items specifically. Finally she opened the last bag, the one that would stay on the plane, and pulled out a bottle of bleach, a make-up organizer that she opened the zipper off, white stockings with a gather belt and a pair of silver high heels.

She placed all of it on the table and waited for her handler’s assessment on what she would be allowed to take.

The man stepped up to the table and began checking through the items. When he came to the bottle of bleach he turned around, grabbed Natalia’s hair roughly and pulled her head down for him to inspect the color of her roots. He decided that she wouldn’t need to recolor it and let go off her to put the bottle on a different table. Natalia knew that he was right. She didn’t understand it yet but she knew for a fact that he was right. She would have wanted to give of the impression of being a natural blonde, dressed in a princess’s dress trying to be valued and desperate for someone to protect her from to world without knowing that the people at the party with her might just be the worst people she would ever meet.

With the roots visible she would have to admit to having changed them which meant that she knew about her marks preferences. On the other hand, if she got the transport right she could pretend to be a gift from an interested party… That would actually fit in with the kink list a lot better. She wouldn’t need to be broken, she would be a well-trained, fearful doll for him to use and then discard. He would trust her more easily if he knew that she wouldn’t defy him. Her handlers always did know best after all.

He didn’t take anything else and she was more than relieved about that. Spending 15 days in a cramped space was bad enough on its own, she didn’t need to do it without the simple comfort of having at least a bit of water every day. When he nodded Natalia quickly repacked her bags and stripped out of her shirt and pants. She raised her hands above her head and spread her legs to about shoulder width, her handler put on rubber gloves and meticulously searched her skin for bumps or cuts that would be evidence of her trying to smuggle something with her.

When he was done and nodded at her she thanked him, as was expected, and grabbed her bags to carry them into the plane. Inside she packed them away before waiting for her handler to finish his inspection of the plane. When he came he handed her the underwear she had requested and settled into one of the seats at the conference table. She put on the underwear quickly, and was about to start on her stockings when the plane took off.

She put on her make-up under the watchful eye of her handler and strapped on the belt with the duffle bag. She twisted the belt until the bag hung behind her roughly at the height of her knees. She wouldn’t be able to sit but that wasn’t possible with the dress she had chosen anyways so she was reasonably certain that she had picked the best spot for the bag. Then she put on the strapless dress, her handler kindly helped her close it, and started practicing every movement she could think about that might be restricted by the bag. She started off by attempting a light stroll and realizing that the bag build up quite a lot of momentum with each step before hitting her in the back of the knees. She took a while to stop them buckling with each step. Then she tried to feign stumbling without actually stumbling because of the bag. It was not as controlled as she would have wanted but a lot less pathetic than her first tries walking so she decided to go with it. She spent about an hour and a half working through the restriction of the bag and when she ended up with a decent range of movement she allowed herself a few moments to flesh out the cover she had decided on.

She would take a taxi from the airfield to the port, where the party would be in a warehouse. It was important that she went for a taxi, not a car with a driver because she had to convince her mark hat she didn’t have any fight left in her. A driver might ignore her pleading not to have to go; a taxi would mean that she simply hadn’t pleaded. She would approach her mark directly and have eyes only for him but she wouldn’t initiate a conversation, she would just wait to be taken. She would avoid eye contact and try to hide in the shadows but she wouldn’t ever be too far away for him to grab her without having to make any real effort. Available but terrified.

That would be simple enough to get her into the headspace. She risked a last glimpse at her handler, he didn’t seem to require anything else, and so she started her transformation. When they landed she wouldn’t be Natalia anymore. She would be Maria… unless master prefers something else.

When Natalia started dancing she felt the bag hit her knees, she struggled against the tight band of the push-up bra and the uncomfortable pull on the belt. She felt her feel scream at the way she jammed them into the shoes that weren’t meant for ballet and, while having been reinforced so they could withstand it, hadn’t been made any more supporting or comfortable.

She focused on her mantra. Available but terrified. Available but terrified. Available but terrified.

Maria stopped dancing when the plane started its descent. She didn’t want to fall, that might tear her dress and Master would not want her dress to be torn. She exited the plane as soon as she could, no need to keep them waiting. She trembled slightly when she stood on the tarmac, a bit of cash for the cab clutched tightly in her shaking hand, even though the air was much warmer than the plane had been. Maria made her way towards the edge of the airfield where a small house proclaimed to be the Austin TX Postal Service. Somehow even Maria doubted that.

There was however a disgruntled worker at the desk inside who didn’t seem bothered in the slightest by the plane that took off again on his airfield after having dropped off a pretty, shaking girl. He took her in with an assessing glance that seemed to tell him everything he wanted to know if his predatory smile was anything to go by. Marias voice was soft and placating when she asked him to call her a taxi. She watched him with wide eyes as he called for one and flinched when he put down the phone way to hard.

The worker grunted that the cab would be there in a few minutes and why don’t she just stand right there and look pretty. Maria was too terrified to move.

When the cab pulled up she looked at the worker pleadingly and after one last oddly satisfied look he allowed her to leave. She hurried outside, again surprised by how warm it was and entered the taxi. She gave the address and sat silently as the car made its way through the evening. The skirt hid the way her bag made her sit rather peculiarly, really it was more of a half-stand, and the cabbie seemed to have been called to the airfield one time to many to still bother asking questions.

The ride was over fairly quickly and when Maria gave the cabbie a lot more money than the taximeter read he took it without fumbling for change. That might be another reason for the lack of questions.

Maria exited the taxi and stood in front of a rather large warehouse. It looked empty but Maria didn’t doubt her orders. She gingerly entered through a half opened door and stood in a dark, yet heavily occupied room. She had barely come through the door when she was noticed and grabbed harshly, dragged through the dark room, through two pairs of black out curtains and through another small room that was obviously meant to mask the sounds that drifted out from the center of the warehouse. After passing through a last heavy steel door Maria and her escort, a rather bulky, muscled man with a handlebar mustache and small, yellow eyes, stood in front of what might have started out as a lavish party but had quickly declined to a boxing ring and an orgy. The entire room seemed to center around one man, a man whose sight made Natalia start being involved in Marias thought process again.

It was always easiest to let her cover make her way towards the mark and get involved only when the first step was made. Natalia had been silently watching and doing her own assessments while Maria navigated the way from the airfield to the warehouse. Normally she would have waited for Maria to navigate initial contact as well but seeing her mark and more specifically how the room rotated around him she had decided that Marias decision to wait for him to approach her might just have been a little too naïve. He seemed like the type of man who wouldn’t entertain her but rather give her to one of his… employees if she wasn’t, well, entertaining enough.

Natalia sent Maria over to the man and was silently surprised when her escort did nothing to stop her. Apparently Maria had been rather very convincing. Her mark picked up on her when she was halfway through the room and started to really notice her when she was about two meters from where he sat. He followed her with his eyes as she stepped even closer and sunk into a deep curtsey, mindful of the duffle bag.

With the most broken, pleading voice Maria could manage she said: “I beg of you, Master, please destroy me”. Then she waited with her head bent respectfully, her arms crossed behind her back and the duffle bag dangling barely an inch above the ground. The room quieted down enough to be respectful yet not so much as to sound shocked in any way. Maria had chosen the right words then.

Her mark chuckled darkly and rose to his feet. With a rather deep voice he told the guests to enjoy the rest of the party, he would have to excuse himself, there was, after all, nothing worse than ignoring a lady’s wishes.

He grabbed her by the hair and dragged her out of the room. Natalia was relieved that the kink list held true and he really wasn’t into exhibitionism, which would have made the duffle bag hard to explain away; Maria was terrified. Terrified but available.

Her mark dragged her to a bedroom, far enough from the party to make it easy for Natalia to exit the premises once she completed her mission. The room even had a window. Maria was convincingly broken.

Natalia wasn’t carrying any weapons aside from the small knife in her bag and she had no way to reach that inconspicuously so she decided to entertain him for a little while longer until he presented an opportunity. No need draining herself now, her extraction would be strenuous enough.

Her mark seemed rather intrigued with her, Natalia noted with a smirk. He had positioned her in the middle of the room, her dress flaring out around her, still intricately layered and delicately woven. She fell back into a curtsey, slightly deeper this time, just deep enough for the duffle bag to rest on the ground and when she crossed her arms behind her back she opened the belt that held up the bag. To mask the sound of the belt hitting the ground she drew a ragged breath that made her mark laugh and pull her face into his crotch. Maria whimpered and Natalia shifted slightly so a few layers of her dress caught under her foot. When her mark thrust his crotch into her face she pretended to stumble and ripped off those layers to make them cover the bag on the ground.

Her mark laughed again and dragged her up by her hair, away from the fabric on the ground that covered the bag quite well. She barely had time for a self-satisfied inward smirk, when the man threw her on a bed and threw up the fabric of her skirt, tearing off a few more pieces in the process. He gripped the crinolines horizontal wires and snapped them one by one. When he was done he bent the underskirt open and gripped her pussy through the thin lace panties she wore. It was nothing if not possessive.

Then he said the single most overdramatic thing Natalia had heard in a long time, maybe ever. “Look at that, little oyster. I broke your shell and now I own your pearl.”

Maria whimpered and gasped, Natalia was tempted to roll her eyes.

He moved on and grabbed the silk-wrapped corsage of her dress. With way too practiced movements he broke and ripped apart the front of it in a surprisingly straight line. This was where Natalia decided to stop him, she didn’t have a change of clothes and the Red Room wouldn’t want her to wear something they hadn’t explicitly allowed her so she would be spending the next two weeks in that dress. She’d much rather it actually still be a dress. While he kneeled between her spread legs and grasped for her breasts in the ridiculous push-up Natalia decided on a way to kill him.

While he tore at her bra, and hadn’t the man ever heard of simply opening things, she shifted slightly and just as she felt it rip apart she slammed her fist bent thumb knuckle first into his temple. He was out cold almost immediately.

She shoved him off of her and groaned as her dress fell apart around her when she sat up. She didn’t have a lot of time, her extraction plan waited after all. She stood up holding the dress together around her, the skirt was luckily still fairly ok, only missing quite a lot of layers at this point, but the top part was drifting open at the front and her bra ruined. Strapping one of the torn off layers of skirt that the room was decorated with around her chest se was reasonably certain that the dress would at least hold for the duration of the trip to the ship.

Once that was taken care of she turned to her mark. Natalia was fairly certain that she’d broken his temple and maybe even the artery beneath it, at least if the pain in her thumb was anything to go by. Just to be sure she still felt for a pulse and was glad she did because she still felt one. She decided to strangle him because then she would at least not get any stains on her dress. As she wrapped her hands around her marks neck and started leaning onto it she looked wistfully at her.  Next time, she would be just that tiny bit faster in delivering that first blow, she vowed.

When she was certain that he wouldn’t make a miraculous recovery and had stayed with him long enough to be sure that nobody found him before he started going braindead she stood up, picked up her bag off the floor, decided to take the layers of fabric that had been torn off her dress with her, she might need them after all and checked the window for an opening mechanism. It had a rather simple one. She wasn’t convinced that it wouldn’t start an alarm when she opened it however so she checked again to be absolutely sure that she had everything she needed. She opened the window and was greeted with silence. She quickly jumped out, gathering the remaining layers of her dress in one hand and made a break for it. No need to gamble on there not being a silent alarm.

She knew what warehouse she needed in theory but it still took her a while to find it. When she did she entered through the back and snuck through what seemed like a management area, deserted at this time of night, before she reached the main room which was filled with shipping containers. She started looking for the Container ID she had memorized and was relieved when it was stacked onto only one other container. She climbed up that lower container with her duffle bag still on her shoulder, granted it would be easier without but she wouldn’t risk not having it. Standing on the lower containers lockbox she managed to enter the three digit code into the padlock of the container above her and while her thumb hurt like crazy when she used it to enter the code she was still able to move it fairly well which was a rather good sign. She eased the door open, glad that it was well oiled and jumped up and into the container. Once inside she took in her surroundings while there was still at least a bit of light from outside. The container had a separation in it which allowed her about a meter depth of the container to stay in without making it so light as to arouse suspicion. She placed her bag on the floor and closed the door behind her, shutting out all the light except for a small beam that was able to enter through the finger wide hole that was cut into the door that allowed her to close the padlock from inside.

Now, safe, Natalia suddenly felt the exhaustion of dancing for seven hours straight while weighed down by a heavy duffle bag. She usually preferred to get her cover out of her head as soon as possible, Maria was a rather unsettling presence in her mind at the moment, but right now all she wanted was rest. She placed her bag on the ground, emptied it to make sure that she wouldn’t damage her supplies, pulling out the knife so she had it within her reach and the box with the pill. Glad that she wouldn’t have to take it because she had decided to kill her mark before he had fucked her. Granted, she wouldn’t get pregnant, she had graduated the Red Room after all, but it made sure she didn’t get any STDs which was a rather massive bonus in her line of work.

Laying her head on her bag Natalia fell asleep quickly.

When she woke she immediately regretted not having taken the time to get rid of Maria. She was never supposed to be in her head for that long, so Natalia hadn’t built her with a switch. Granted there wasn’t much here that she could use as a switch but she would have found something to make a switch if she had taken the time to build Maria with one.

So instead of having a simple something she could do that Maria wouldn’t do to make the difference between them clear all she could do was try to ignore her until she went away. There was no reason why Maria should be sticking around. Natalia hadn’t built her to last; they didn’t share enough similarities for Maria to be this permanent. It should take effort to stay her, not to stop being her.

Natalia sat up and felt her mood get even worse at the headache she had, dehydration was no fun at all. She had a planned a liter of water a day which should be fine, she could last about four days without water anyways and after that she’d be almost at the recommended one and a half liter a day. Sadly she hadn’t actually been able to fit fifteen liters of water into the bag. She had ended up with half a liter a day. That was too little so she had decided to dry herself out slowly at least and not do four days without before she started drinking again. She opened her first bottle and was about to drink when she heard the sound of metal hitting metal. She heard voices but couldn’t make out what they were saying. They sounded rather calm though so she assumed that they were workers about to start their day, not guards looking for an escaped toy.

She took a few small sips of water, recapped the bottle carefully and settled against the outer wall of the container. About half an hour later she heard the voices again, now accompanied by a mechanical whirring sound. When she felt the container shift soon after she knew that she was being loaded onto the ship.

The container moved for quite a while before standing still for a few minutes and then moving again, this time creaking horribly, probably being loaded by crane. When the container was finally settled down she risked a glance through the hole in the door and was immensely relieved to see that she was at the very back of the ship again only one container above ground level. Being able to keep track of night and day would make rationing so much easier. She could do without knowing. She was well-trained. But she preferred not having to do that because sleeping while counting just wasn’t the same.

She resettled against the wall. She wouldn’t eat until nightfall, and drinking to pass the time wasn’t an amazing idea when you barely had any water but she found something to entertain herself with fairly quickly, namely fixing her dress up.

She cut off long, thin strips of fabric off the bottom of her skirt and braided them into a fairly sturdy band. She noticed that her thumb hurt considerably less. She replaced the rather frayed piece of fabric she had used at the warehouse with the new band and once she was satisfied with the result she leaned back against the wall and realized once again how horribly long those 15 days would be.

She woke when she heard voices. She hadn’t noticed that she’d fallen asleep but she was glad that a little more time had passed. It seemed to be late evening, judging by the hole in the door. She listened but she wasn’t able to make out anything being said over the sounds of the ocean and the constant creaking of the containers. She tried doing a few pushups before she remembered that straining herself on rationed food and water was a horribly bad idea.

Natalia had managed to fit 10 MREs into her bag which put her daily calorie intake to 800 which was too little but here as well as with the water she had resigned to starving herself slowly and hoping to be allowed time to replenish herself before her next mission. She wasn’t sure why she was thinking about that until her stomach growled audibly.

She spent exactly one hour counting seconds and aggressively ignoring Maria before she allowed herself the first ration.

After having eaten two thirds of the MRE slowly she finished the water bottle. She rested her head on the bag again and fell asleep blissfully quickly.

There were no real routines on the ship. Well, maybe there were but they weren’t anywhere near Natalia’s container so she didn’t know about any. There were no voices or footsteps to anticipate and no alarms or signals that she could anticipate time by. The only sign she had that they were in fact getting closer to Russia was the fact that it had been getting increasingly cold. At first she had thought that it was simply her body shutting down because she was getting rather severely malnourished but when she had woken up one day to find her water bottles frozen she had known that that wasn’t all.

They hadn’t burst, luckily, thanks to her using soft plastic bottles but having to clutch them to her freezing body to warm them up enough to drink from didn’t exactly make her feel very lucky. She had wrapped her bare shoulders in the layers of the dress that she had wisely taken from the warehouse but they did little to hide the fact that temperatures dropped below freezing at night. The only pleasant part of her getting more and more disoriented and frayed in the little room that was quite literally her prison, she couldn’t open the padlock from the inside, she’d tried, was Maria being finally, blissfully quiet.

When she had only two bottles left she started worrying what would happen if the ship took sixteen days instead of fifteen. She resolved not to eat anything that day. She spent most of the day drifting in and out of consciousness, trembling too much for her to see anything, not that there really was anything to see but the darkness of the container and the dim beam of light that shone through the hole in the door.

 Natalia saw the door open and wondered if there would be seagulls now. She couldn’t hear any. She could hear a voice but she didn’t try to understand it. It was too cold to understand. A man bent over her and said something. Slowly Natalia felt information drag through the haze in her brain. There was something important there but it was just a bit too far away for her to realize what it was. The man picked her up and threw her over his shoulder. Natalia’s stomach felt funny. Then he picked up her bag and started climbing down the container. He started walking and Natalia thought that he might be a seagull. Had she ever seen one before? She didn’t think so, so for all she knew he could be one. She grinned. She’d just seen her first seagull.

The seagull took her to a wide empty space and up a ramp and into a room. Natalia could tell because it was less windy. Then the seagull whooshed her back over his shoulder and into a chair. Natalia’s stomach didn’t like that at all. The room was spinning around her and the man was gone. Then he was back, tying her to the chair. Natalia pulled at the bonds more out of reflex than anything else and was surprised when they didn’t move. She pulled some more and felt the fog in her mind clear up a little with every pull.

Finally she snapped back into reality and went still. Where was she? And who was that? Was he her extraction? The room started moving and it took Natalia embarrassingly long to figure out that rooms didn’t usually move so this one probably wasn’t a room after all but a plane.

The man settled into a chair across from her, assessing her, holding a mug with something steaming. “I guess that means you are back to thinking?” He asked. Natalia tried not to show anything on her face. “You will drink this.” He told her. Natalia suppressed a shudder. The way he talked made her believe that maybe he was her extraction. She had never met anyone outside of the Red Room who could make an order seem so casual that it wasn’t even an order anymore. It was just stating facts. If I drop this it will fall. Water freezes. You will drink this. No doubt about it, no questions here.

He stood up and walked towards her. She opened her mouth. No reason to make him doubt that she was going to obey; she was weak enough already without going through a punishment for disobedience. A small part of her wondered if this was a test or something. Was this interrogation-training? Was she supposed to refuse on principle because she hadn’t done anything to earn something to drink? She decided that if it was, the punishment for failing the test would be less horrible than the one for disobeying if this wasn’t a test so she simply accepted the liquid and started swallowing as soon as the mug touched her lips.

When she had swallowed every last drop of the surprisingly thick liquid the man sat back down and watched her intently. He was obviously waiting for something to happen, so Natalia resigned to waiting as well, mildly curious what the liquid would do to her. She hadn’t had to try that one before.


	2. Choice

At first she didn’t feel a difference but after a while she felt something shift inside her. It was hard to describe, a bit like seeing color again after having forgotten that it existed. Not unpleasant or frightening just giving something back that she hadn’t noticed missing. Mildly surprising, yet nothing spectacular. Her mind seemed just a little clearer, a little more slotted back into place.

It must have shown on her face because the man started to speak: “Back in your head, are you? Great, now listen. My name is Clint Barton, I’m with SHIELD. I was sent to kill you. I didn’t. I didn’t when you stood motionless in front of a window for fifteen minutes at that airfield, I didn’t when I saw you kill someone through my scope and I didn’t when you climbed into a shipping container not three meters from my vantage point. I haven’t killed you yet either but that is all you get. This is it for me. It’s your choice now.” He paused and stared at her. Natalia realized that he was probably waiting for an answer. She swallowed against the sudden dryness of her throat and managed a small “Yes, Sir”, her voice nearly unrecognizable even to herself.

He nodded and continued: “You have two choices. One, you take this parachute”, he lifted a bag from the floor and settled it on the armrest next to him for emphasis, “you jump of this plane, make your way back to the Red Room and I’ll kill you the next time I see you.” He looked at her expectantly. Natalia didn’t dare to even look at the parachute. “Or two, you let me take you in, you defect to the United States and become a SHIELD Agent. No torture, no humiliation, no brainwashing, just a bunch of paperwork and a lot of training you are surprisingly missing.” He finished with a small grin on his face. His eyes looked a lot less terrifying with the small laughter lines that were visible now.

There was a long silence while Natalia was trying to make sense of the words he had said and the man, Clint Barton, just sat there and waited for her to answer.

The Red Room had trained her well in many things; choices weren’t one of those. Choices were dangerous to them so they didn’t want to girls to be able to make them. What use was an operative that wouldn’t obey orders? An operative that wouldn’t kill when they were supposed to even if they had their target in a clear shot… four times in a row. An operative like Clint Barton.

Clint Barton didn’t seem like a bad operative. He seemed like the kind of asset that every intelligence agency would rejoice to have. In control, silent, patient and deadly. He had made her drink an unknown substance simply by telling her to do it. Maybe he was worth the trouble of him making choices. It sounded ridiculous; the Red Room would never have allowed that.

Natalia knew then that she had made her choice. She felt it deep inside her, somewhere near where she knew that Natalia Alianovna Romanova wasn’t actually her name and that that strip-searches the handlers did weren’t done for security but as a means to keep the girls small and controllable. In that forbidden part of her brain that she never looked at because if anyone knew that it existed she would be destroyed and remade over and over until they knew how many times the human body could take being broken and what exactly happened after it reached that point.

Maybe the parachute wasn’t even a parachute. She was grasping for reasons for her choice that went with everything she had ever been trained to believe instead of directly against it but it was fairly pointless. She was going to come with him, she would follow him to the end of the earth if that was what it took, because he could have killed her four times and he had _chosen_ not to every single time.

“I’d like to stay, Sir.” Her voice sounded small, too hopeful, too vulnerable, and too open. She didn’t care. He knew that she wasn’t a particularly good asset, he had seen her on her mission, had seen her struggle to knock her mark out, had seen how gone she was after her time in the container. He knew how all it took for her to give up every loyalty she had ever held was the prospect of not being tortured anymore. And he still wanted her. She felt something weird and warm in her chest at the thought.

“Great, I had hoped you would”, he smiled, “I’ll need you to repeat that to my handler so he can stop worrying” Natalia’s blood froze in her veins. Intellectually she had known that there would be handlers at SHIELD, they were a vital aspect of intelligence work, after all, but having to face one of them so soon made her tremble.

She would be on her best behavior, obviously, not only because she wanted them to believe that she could be as good as Clint Barton so they would maybe allow her choices one day as well, but also to make sure that Barton himself wouldn’t get in even more trouble for this, she owed him that much and frankly so much more. The chance to make choices was a literal childhood dream for her.

He handed her a small earpiece, she knew what it was because the Red Room sometimes sent girls out with those because while they were expensive they allowed for changes to the mission while it was in progress which meant that the girls were flexible without having to make choices for themselves. She had never gotten one before.

She was surprised at how pliable the material was .It would fit into her ear perfectly because she could just form it to make sure that it would. She turned it over in her hand, fascinated with the expert craftsmanship that went into making something so small yet so sturdy looking. “It’s my spare, don’t worry, it’s clean.” Barton said. She suddenly, desperately needed him to know that that wasn’t why she was looking at it, that that didn’t matter to her, that she would never refuse an order because she was disgusted by something, but she couldn’t find words that wouldn’t make her sound as desperate as she felt so she kept quiet and shoved the device into her ear.

Barton started speaking; there was no delay between what she heard him say through her open ear and through the earpiece. Natalia was beginning to realize the gravity of the choice she had just made. SHIELD was a multi-million dollar organization; they had planes and enough high quality earpieces to give their agents a spare. They had handlers and operatives that stayed in what appeared to be almost constant contact, and enough manpower to make an agent follow her for almost two weeks through half the northern hemisphere.

If any organization could help her escape the Red Room it was probably SHIELD, but if they wanted to be just as bad there was no getting away from that. Natalia didn’t regret her choice. Because it was a _choice_. And because she thought that having a chance was better than not having one. She didn’t regret it for the same reason she had gone with the bad extraction plan. It was a chance. And she would do everything to take it.

Maybe it was all lies and SHIELD was no better than the Red Room, but there was a miniscule chance that it wasn’t. There was a chance that she could be just a little freer and a little less scared. And that chance was worth even the prospect of disappointed hope.

Barton touched his earpiece and started speaking: “Overwatch, this is Hawkeye, I have the target with me.” There was a short pause then Natalia heard a different voice. It was surprisingly high pitched and kind, not deep and meant to be menacing like the handlers at the Red Room. “Hawkeye, what is the signal strength?” Barton answered without a second’s thought or checking the signal: “Thirteen” She thought she could hear actual relief in the man’s answer:  “Thirteen is not the signal strength; it’s your emotional maturity.” It was then that she understood that they had exchanged passphrases to make sure that they weren’t compromised.

“I’m Agent Phillip Coulson; I am with SHIELD and Agent Barton’s handler. What would you like me to call you?” Natalia understood that she was meant to answer that question; she just wasn’t sure what the answer was. She knew what it would have been in the Red Room, but she was determined to believe that SHIELD was different. She touched her earpiece the same way Agent Barton had “Hello Agent Phillip Coulson, Sir. My name is Natalia, Sir.” That was a lie. She tried again: “Sorry, Sir, my name is not Natalia, I don’t know my name, but I go by Natalia.” She amended.

Agent Coulson didn’t sound angry when he spoke again: “Hello Natalia. Agent Barton is convinced that you aren’t loyal to the Red Room. Is he right?” Natalia knew that this was the changing moment. This man with his kind words and his soft intonation held her life in his hands. Clint Barton had chosen not to kill her four times. Now she needed Phillip Coulson to choose not to do it as well.

Clint Barton had seen her being imperfect and unsatisfactory and he had let her live. Maybe the best way to get Agent Coulson to do the same was to show him that she knew where she failed and allowed him to fix her the way he needed her. Maybe he would want a chance to pick and choose the traits he liked on her and stich her together the way she would need to be to be useful to SHIELD. She felt faint when she realized that she would be ok with that if it meant that she could finally be good enough. She thought she might want that even more than she wanted choices. If she were good enough, if she were finally perfect, her choices would be the right ones so they could let her make as many as she wanted. Because she would choose right.

“Agent Barton is right, Sir. I want to join SHIELD. I know that I have a lot to learn and I know that I don’t deserve a chance but I swear that I will do everything you ask of me to prove myself worthy of you taking a chance on me, Sir” She wanted to say more, to convince him, but she knew that people got annoyed with her when she started rambling so she shut up after those few words and hoped that she had conveyed her sincerity through her tone alone.

There was a pause before Agent Barton said: “I offered to let her go and give her a chance to run. She said she’d rather stay.” Agent Coulson chuckled. “Wherever might you have heard that before?” Then he turned serious again and continued: “I’m going to inform Fury that his phrasing was ambiguous. You are en route to the French base?” Barton hummed an affirmation. “Alright, I’ll pick you up with the bus and well do a basic debrief before we touchdown at the Triskelion.” That information seemed to have some significance to Agent Barton as he interjected: “We’re going to HQ? I figured we would have to rot at the Slingshot until she could sing the entire National Anthem backwards and with tears in her eyes.” That was probably a joke. Possibly. “No, the Red Room won’t be happy about her being gone, and the best place to fend off a large scale attack like that is the Triskelion. Also we won’t have them follow us to a secret location. HQ is basically public knowledge anyways.”   
The second part made a lot more sense than the first. Unless of course they wanted to do it to spite the Red Room. That would be understandable.

Before anyone could say anything else Natalia heard a door open. She tried to turn around in the bonds that still held her to her chair. A moment later a woman entered her field of view, probably the pilot, her mind supplied somewhat belatedly.

“Barton, there was a takeoff in Prague that wasn’t scheduled anywhere, I think we are about to have some company.” She sounded tense but it was the kind of professional tense that came with the job rather than anticipation of real danger. “Welcome to SHIELD. My name is Sharon Carter, by the way. You are the Black Widow, right? Did you really escape that oil rig in the North Sea, Statfjord, was it?” Natalia was dumbfounded. Not only had she been assured that that one wasn’t traceable to her, she was also rather certain that her stint on that oil rig wasn’t something one should sound as amazed about as Agent Carter did. “Yes. I go by Natalia, Ma’am”, she said cautiously. “Ok, Natalia”, she smiled, “there is no need to call me Ma’am, but you absolutely have to tell me about that escape, I wrote one of my graduation essays about it and I did twice as many pages as necessary and still couldn’t fill in all the blanks!” Sharon was bursting with excitement. “She has been annoying all of us with that. I think she actually asked Fury about it once. Nick Fury. The director of SHIELD”, Barton supplied. Natalia nodded, not trusting her voice not to fail her. She had been proud of that escape until her handler had reminded her that there was no reason to be proud of having done her job acceptably for once.

She was spared from having to actively try not to think about that when a loud alarm started blaring. “They have us targeted!” Barton explained while Carter made her way back to the cockpit. She turned around and shouted: “You should jump, I’ll distract them. I trust you can make your way to base? I’ll down her a few miles from here, have them searching the remains for a while.”

Barton touched his earpiece “Change of plans, Overwatch, we are jumping and making our way there on the ground.” Agent Coulson answered immediately. “Copy, the French base is still the closest one that is big enough for the bus to land. Keep me updated.”

Barton nodded grimly and got up. He unsheathed a knife from a holster on his thigh and cut through Natalia’s bonds. Then he handed her the parachute he had used to make his point before. The alarm got louder and faster. The plane flew a sharp turn and the alarm got a little more subdued only to start becoming louder again almost immediately. She knew how to use a parachute; they had been trained in that. Or rather, they had been tossed out of a plane and made to pull wires until they got the right one by chance.

Natalia got the backpack on, the SHIELD version was not much different from the Red Room version, the straps were a little broader and cushioned which made them more comfortable but otherwise they looked the same. She felt Barton looking at her and turned around to find him quite literally measuring her with his eyes. He grabbed what seemed like a very specific bag from a shelf with about twenty identical ones and turned to stare at her again, this time with an unnerving glint in his eyes that made them seem much more seeing than they should. “You made your choice”, he said. Natalia nodded resolutely even though it wasn’t a question. He grinned and handed her the bag.

She gripped it like her life depended on it. It probably didn’t. He probably wouldn’t kill her if she lost it.

Barton took another bag of the shelf; this one was distinctly different from the others and the only one of its kind. ”Hold on to something” he said, and then he put on a parachute as well and pushed a button on the wall beside the shelf that was hidden behind some camouflage mesh. The side of the plane slid away and Natalia couldn’t hear anything anymore over the sound of the wind.  Barton was hugging the bag to his body with one hand and held on to the shelf with the other. She hugged her bag as well, she had never jumped out of a plane with a bag that she didn’t want to lose before, it was best to do as the expert did. He held up three fingers, hooking his arm around the shelf to have a free hand, then two, he was counting down. At one Natalia let go of the chair she had been gripping and ran to the edge of the plane. For a tiny moment before she reached the edge of the plane Natalia remembered wondering if the parachute was real. She took only a split second to decide that if it wasn’t then this, right here, right now, wasn’t a bad way to go. When she reached the edge Barton grabbed onto her and they jumped out together. If the parachute didn’t open she would be save if she could just hold on to him. She had a chance.

They were falling, clutched together, Barton on top of her, with the bags squeezed between them. Natalia stared up and found the plane quite far away the exact second it was hit by an explosion. Before she could see if it had survived the impact Agent Barton motioned for her to pull the strings on her parachute. She nodded and held on even tighter to the bag. He let go of her and opened his parachute. He seemed to immediately stop falling. She wanted to make sure that she wouldn’t hit him with her parachute so she waited for a few moments before she realized how quickly she was losing altitude. She was suddenly a lot further down than he was. Panicked she pulled the string on her parachute and was incredibly relieved when she saw it open.

She hugged the bag with both arms and still almost lost it when she stopped freefalling and the parachutes position on the harness whirled her around so she was facing the ground. Then she realized that Barton hadn’t stopped falling, just like she hadn’t. The field below her came closer very quickly and she knew that this wouldn’t be a comfortable landing.

She crashed down with way too much force and the impact drove the air from her lungs. It took a monumental amount of effort just to take a breath. She felt weirdly heavy and when she rolled of the bag she felt like she was rolling on and on. She closed her eyes and took a few deep, painful breaths before she remembered where she was and what had happened. She should stop babying herself and start looking for Agent Barton. He was her only defense against the Red Room and if something happened to him because of her she would… She didn’t know what she would do.

An ugly, strangled sound forced its way out of her throat. Agent Carter. She had probably died for Natalia. She would still be alive if she had just gone back to the Red Room when Barton had offered. She had been so excited about Statfjord, so ready to talk to her like a human being. And she was dead because Natalia wanted choices.

Natalia clenched her jaw as she sat up. The world was still spinning but less so now. She opened her eyes and started looking around. If Carter had died for her to have choices she would choose. Her death would be a waste if she didn’t.

It was a waste one way or the other.

Natalia collected the parachute and stuffed it back into the backpack. She had no idea how to fold it for it to be useful again but maybe Barton did. And if he didn’t she’d use the fabric to make clothes for herself once they were somewhere remotely safe. The dress had survived the fall surprisingly well, that is to say, it didn’t look any worse than before but that was still fascinatingly bad. It was torn to shreds and smelled horrible from her time in the container.

Then she threw the bag over one arm and the backpack on and looked around for the Barton’s landing site. 

He had touched down not far away from her crash site. And he looked much more composed than her. She ran over and watched him check over his parachute. When he got to a portion of string that was hopelessly knotted around a twig he cursed under his breath and started shoving it into the backpack.

“We have to get to cover. The parachutes are engineered to make us harder to detect while falling and we opened them pretty far down but we best not take any chances”, he started walking towards a group of trees that was really too small to be called a forest, “Why did you wait so long to open yours?” He seemed to want to make conversation. Natalia swallowed. “I’m sorry Sir; I didn’t want it to hit you, Sir.” They had reached the non-forest and Barton motioned for her to sit on a fallen tree.

“Drop the Sir, I’m just Clint. I appreciate the gesture but I can take a parachute or two to the face” he laughed, seeming determined to not let this be awkward and embarrassing for her. No humiliation at SHIELD.

“There are clothes for you in your bag. Nothing fancy but less conspicuous than a torn doll dress, I guess. There are some weapons in there as well. Don’t stab me” he finished with a grin. “Never, Si… Clint” escaped her before she could really think about it. She still sounded too vulnerable and honest. What was up with her?

“You went through almost two weeks of white torture and are severely malnourished” Clint said dryly. Apparently she was saying her thoughts out loud now. What a sterling testimony to the Red Room Program she was.

She opened the bag. The clothes were remarkably normal. Dark jeans, a navy blue top, and a black canvas jacket. It was just enough color to not be all black without there actually being much color. There was underwear in the bag as well, a simple black sports bra and plain black panties. Near one end there even were shoes which was great because the ones she was wearing were definitely not made for hiking in Europe.

Barton had turned away respectfully which seemed odd, considering she was fairly certain he had seen every bit of what had happened in her mark’s bedroom. She appreciated it nonetheless.

While she changed Barton opened his bag and pulled a surprising amount of guns and knives as well as a quiver filled with arrows and a mechanical contraption that was probably a bow but Natalia was really just guessing from context. Natalia had never seen a compound bow before. She knew what it was because she had once had a mark that knew but she hadn’t gotten to see one. She had worked with a homemade straight bow before but that had been a lot less about the delicate art of archery than about the human body’s base need for food. She had learned a lot when the Red Room decided that they needed to be dropped in the Siberian wilderness for a few weeks to learn how to survive being abandoned in the Siberian wilderness for a few weeks. One of those things had been that she was not great at shooting bows, abysmal at making them but quite phenomenal at stealing them from beneath sleeping people’s heads.

Finally getting out of the ratty dress felt incredible, the only thing that would have made it even more amazing would have been a shower. They would have to stop at a hotel for that. Not for her comfort but for the sake of being discreet.  Natalia was currently rather detectable to anybody with a nose.

Natalia checked the bag for the weapons Barton had promised and came up with a semiautomatic pistol, a knife with a seven inch blade, which was way bigger than the tiny, well-hidden ones she usually worked with, and, much to her surprise, pepper spray. She shoved the gun into the back of her jeans and was pleased to find that the jacket covered it completely. SHIELD knew how to assemble an operative’s outfit. She packed the pepper spray into a well-visible pocket on her jacket, making sure that the outline was screaming what it was to anybody who would think to look twice.

Hiking in Europe defenseless? High-risk behavior and therefore not necessarily all that believable, but thinking that one can of pepper spray might be enough to defend yourself with? That was naïve enough to be non-threatening but prepared enough to be credible.

Barton was wearing dark green cargo pants and a black top which made him look a lot more like a military operative than a hiker. They would have to get him a camouflage bomber jacket to make it seem like he was trying to go for a military style look, rather than epitomizing everything that look stood for.

“There is a sheath for that knife of yours in the arm of the jacket”, Barton advised. She found it and wrestled the knife into it. It was fairly hard to slide into the sheath but it blended really well with the jacket once inside and was easy to pull out again when she tried that.

While Natalia watched Barton hide some of the weapons, including the presumable bow and a few arrows, in his clothes and pack the rest, including at least three rifles, back into the duffle bag she tried to find the right words to ask a question she was not certain she wanted answered.

“Agent Carter…” she trailed off but Barton stopped his packing efforts and gave her a quick once-over. After a pause that was just a beat too long to seem natural he answered nonchalantly: “She is probably just fine, it takes more than whatever the KGB has ready to go in Prague to knock out a Quinjet. She’ll down the plane because of it, though. Have them think that it caught and search the crash site.”

Natalia wanted to be relieved but a part of her brain simply refused believing that Carter was alive before she saw her. She managed to quiet it down by resolving to tell Carter all about Statfjord when she saw her again.

Barton touched his earpiece “Overwatch, this is Hawkeye, Red and I are on the ground, can you locate us?” Barely a few seconds later there was an answer. “I have you, there is a small town about a mile and a half southwest of your location, I suggest you go there” Natalia was fairly certain that Agent Coulson had never lost track of them but he had waited for them to ask. He suggested they go there. Suggested. Like a choice. She would laugh, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that it might have been just that. That if Barton told him that they were going north that would be where they were going.

“Copy that!” Barton let go of the earpiece and continued talking “We’ll get a motel room, you can take a shower and we’ll figure out the best way to get to the French base”

They started walking, Clint Barton and a compass leading the way and Natalia following barely a step behind, wondering why the man would ever trust her enough to turn his back. She might be malnourished and behind on her training because of the lack of equipment and space in the container, but she had an insanely sharp knife strapped to her upper arm that she could have driven into his back even if she had never even heard of blades before. She wouldn’t. But he couldn’t possibly know that, she barely knew it herself. She knew she wouldn’t stab him somewhere in the back of her mind, somewhere near where she knew that she wouldn’t start flying if she jumped right now. It was certain, if she thought about it but until she did the possibility seemed real. She didn’t know why she knew it either. It was simply a fact that she could afford not to have at the forefront of her mind, because it was a constant.

But he didn’t know that. He was either incredibly reckless or incredibly stupid. He didn’t strike her as either.

They walked in silence and Natalia was becoming increasingly sure that that wasn’t ideal. They had to get a cover going before they encountered anybody who might question it. “Agent Barton, should we have a cover?” she asked carefully. He was obviously more skilled than her. Maybe he knew a better way.

“Yeah, we probably should. Can you come up with one? I’m not exactly trained in undercover ops” he answered casually.

“Well, I would go with a young couple on their honeymoon” Natalia proposed.

“Really? Isn’t that… I don’t know… too common? Like isn’t that everybody’s go to cover?” he questioned.

“Yes. Sorry” Natalia conceded.

 “Oh, you are the expert; quite literally, they teach undercover theory based on your covers. If you think that is the right one then that is the one we are using. I guess I was just hoping you’d explain why” Barton had stopped walking and was fixing her with a look in his eyes that reminded her of an X-Ray that somehow knew what a broken bone felt like. Seeing too much and understanding too much.

“Well… uhm… In a good cover story the story is boring and normal and the details are uncommon and intricate. Because… people aren’t special, but they like to think they are. They get married like everyone else but they think that they are different” They resumed walking. “A couple on their honeymoon, like so many others, but you gave me a necklace instead of a ring because we are different and it means more when we do it. People are desperate to be different because they can’t fathom the idea that maybe they aren’t special, maybe they are just interchangeable” she was actually rather good at covers… because she liked lying, seeing what stories she could get away with and analyzing people to find out what they wanted her to be.

That last one was her go to move. She would find out who somebody wanted her to be and be that person with the slightest divergence ever so often, to make it realistic. If she was everything they wanted, they never believed it but if she was just a tiny bit less they suddenly felt like they were entitled to that.

She purposefully avoided thinking about why she hadn’t thought of doing that with Barton.

“Our story has to be common. We don’t pass as siblings and in many peoples’ minds boys and girls can’t be just friends, so lovers it is. We are the right age for a rather early wedding, fresh out of school, madly in love and stupid, which is always great for people to think that you are. Stupid, that is. Honeymoon because that’s romantic and romantic people are non-threatening. Also hiking in France is rather cliché. People expect that and people like to think that they are right. If someone assumes something is a certain way it is a lot easier to just go with that and shape your story from that starting point than to convince people that they are wrong. They are a lot less suspicious when they are self-satisfied”

“Makes sense. You should think about giving classes about that at SHIELD. You make it seem so straight forward. The instructors at the academy just talk about how you have to be all those contradicting things. Like interesting but boring, polite but rude. Stuff like that” Barton complained.

Natalia managed an honest smile. She was taught the same stuff; she actually remembered being told to be interesting but boring. “That’s not technically about cover stories. That’s about blending. You want to be interesting enough to not be remembered for being boring but boring enough to not be remembered for anything else. It’s not supposed to mean that you have to be both interesting and boring; you are supposed to be neither” They were silent for a minute. Barton was waiting for Natalia to talk more and Natalia was slowly figuring out that she liked how he just listened to what she was talking about. Being taken seriously was a rather incredible feeling, apparently.

She decided to keep talking and tried to convince herself that it was the malnourishment that was making her spill her trade secrets rather than the high that came with the respect she was getting from Barton. As far as she could remember, Natalia had never been respected before.

“Do you know about Aristotle?” she asked.

“Well, I know of him. He was an old Greek dude with opinions on life” Barton said somewhat reproachful.

Natalia laughed. She wasn’t a fan either, her mark had been. “He had this theory, that there had to be a balance in every person. A balance between too much and too little of some trait and that balance was virtue” Barton scoffed and Natalia couldn’t help but agree. “The thing is, that is kind of how blending works. In a cover you want a net of memorable details that hide all the things that don’t add up. Once you have spent enough time with the people you want to deceive for them to find flaws and contradictions in you, they are convinced enough of your cover to search for reasons for those discrepancies in the cover, not outside of it. When you blend you want to be forgotten. So you find the middle ground between rude and polite and that middle ground is forgettable” she finished.

Barton still seemed interested and because of that a part of her wanted to never stop talking. However, they could see the outskirts of the town now and they still had a cover to flesh out.


End file.
